University of California • Berkeley 
 S. Griswold Morley Collection 
 
u<^, 
 
AN INQUIRY 
 
 ii 
 
 INTO SOME OP 
 
 THE CONDITIONS AT PRESENT AFFECTING 
 
 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE' 
 
 IK OUR SCHOOLS. 
 
 BY JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 Read at the Ordinary General Meeting of th*» Itoyal Institnte of British Architec<s^ 
 May 15th, 1865. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 JOHN WH.EY & SON, 535 BROADWAY. 
 
 1866. 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 I SUPPOSE there is Jio man who, permitted to address, for the 
 first time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel 
 himself abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be 
 heard by them, even if he attempted only to describe what 
 had come under his personal observation, much more if on 
 the occasion he thought it would be expected of him to 
 touch upon any of the general principles of the art of archi- 
 tecture before its principal English masters. * 
 
 But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it 
 is certainly one who has first to ask their pardon for the petu- 
 lance of boyish expressions of partial thought ; for ungrace- 
 ful advocacy of principles which needed no support from 
 him, and discourteous blame of work of which he had never 
 fell the difficulty. 
 
 Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen — and I do it sin 
 cerely and in shame — it is not as desiring to retract anything 
 in the general tenor and scope of what I have hitherto tried 
 
4 THE STUDY OF AKCHITECTURE. 
 
 to say. Permit me the pain, and the apparent impertinence, 
 of speaking for a moment of my own past work ; for it is 
 necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night 
 should be spoken in no disadvantageous connexion with that ; 
 and yet understood as spoken in no discordance of purpose 
 with that. Indeed, there is much in old work of mine which 
 I could wish to put out of mind. Reasonings, perhaps not 
 in themselves false, but founded on insufficient data and 
 imperfect experience — eager preferences, and dislikes, depen- 
 dent on cliance circumstances of association, and limitations 
 of sphere of labour : but, while I would fain now, if I could, 
 modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my 
 writings, let me also say of them that they were the expres- 
 sion of a delight in the art of architecture which was too 
 intense to be vitally deceived, and of an inquiry too honest 
 and eager to be 'without some useful result ; and I only wish 
 I had now time, and strength, and power of mind, to carry 
 on, more worthily, the main endeavour of my early work. 
 That main endeavour has been throughout to set forth the life 
 of the individual human spirit as modifying the application 
 of the formal laws of architecture, no less than of all other 
 arts ; and to show that the power and advance of this art, 
 even in conditions of formal nobleness, were dependent on its 
 just association with sculpture as a means of expressing the 
 beauty of natural forms : and I the more boldly ask your 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 5 
 
 permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my 
 past work, because there are many buildings now rising in 
 the streets of London, as in other cities of England, which 
 aijpear to be designed in accordance with this principle, and 
 which are, I believe, more offensive to all who thoughtfully 
 concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism than 
 they are to the classical architect to whose modes of design 
 they are visibly antagonistic. These buildings, in which the 
 mere cast of a flower, or the realization of a vulgar face, 
 carved without pleasure by a workman who is only endea- 
 vouring to attract attention by novelty, and then fastened on, 
 or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to an 
 arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to nobly natu- 
 ralistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture land- 
 scapes do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek 
 sculpture; and the feelings with which true naturalists regard 
 such buildings of this class are, as nearly as might be, what 
 a painter would experience, if, having contended earnestly 
 against conventional schools, and having asserted that the 
 Greek vase-painting, and Egyptian wall-painting, and Medias- 
 val glass-painting, though beautiful, aU, in their place and 
 way, were yet subordinate arts, and culminated only in per- 
 fectly naturalistic work such as Raphael's in fresco, and 
 Titian's on canvas ; — if, I say, a painter, fixed in such faith 
 in an entire, intellectual, and manly truth, and maintaining* 
 
6 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 that an Egyptian profile of a head, liowever decoratively 
 applicable, was only noble for such human truth as it con- 
 tained, and was imperfect and ignoble beside a work of 
 Titian's, were shown, by his antagonist, the colored daguer- 
 reotype of a human body in its nakedness, and told that it 
 was art such as that which he really advocated, and to such 
 art that his principles, if carried out, would finally lead. 
 
 And because this question lies at the very root of the 
 organization of the system of instruction for our youth, I 
 venture boldly to express the surprise and regret with which 
 T see our schools still agitated by assertions of the opposi- 
 tion of Naturalism to Invention, and to the higher conditions 
 of art. Even in this very room I believe there has lately 
 been question whether a sculptor should look at a real living 
 creature of which he had to carve the image. I would 
 answer in one sense, — no ; that is to say, he ought to carve no 
 living creature while he still needs to look at it. If we do 
 not know what a human body is like, we certainly had better 
 look, and look often, at it, before we carve it ; but if we 
 already know the human likeness so well that we can carve it 
 by light of memory, we shall not need to ask whether we 
 ought now to look at it or not ; and what is true of man is 
 true of all other creatures and organisms — of bird, and 
 beast, and leaf. No assertion is more at variance with th( 
 •laws of classical as well as of subsequent art than the com 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 7 
 
 mon one that species should not be distinguished in great 
 design. We might as well say that we ought to carve a man 
 so as not to know him from an ape, as that we should carve 
 a lily so as not to know it from a thistle. It is difficult for 
 me to conceive how this can be asserted in the presence of 
 any remains either of great Greek or Italian art. A Greek 
 looked at a cockle-shell or a cuttle-fish as carefully as he 
 ^ooked at an Olympic conqueror. The eagle of Elis, the 
 lion of Velia, the horse of Syracuse, the bull of Thurii, the 
 dolphin of Tarentum, the crab of Agrigentura, and the craw- 
 fish of Catana, are studied as closely, every one of them, as 
 the Juno of Argos, or Apollo of Clazomenae. Idealism, so 
 far from being contrary to special truth, is the very abstrac- 
 tion of specialty from everything else. It is the earnest 
 statement of the characters which make man man, and cockle 
 cockle, and flesh flesh, and fish fish. Feeble thinkers 
 indeed, always suppose that distinction of kind involves 
 meanness of style ; but the meanness is in the treatment, not 
 in the distinction. There is a noble way of carving a man, 
 and a mean one ; and there is a noble way of carving a 
 beetle, and a mean one ; and a great sculptor carves his scara 
 baeus grandly, as he carves his king, while a mean sculptor 
 makes vermin of both. And it is a sorrowful truth, yet a 
 sublime one, that this greatness of treatment cannot be 
 taught by talking about it. No, nor even by enforced imi- 
 
8 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 tative practice of it. Men treat their subjects nobly only 
 ■when Ihey themselves become noble ; not till then. And 
 that elevation of their own nature is assuredly not to be 
 effected by a course of drawing from models, however well 
 chosen, or of Hstening to lectures, however well intendea! 
 
 Art, national or individual, is the result of a long course 
 of previous life and training ; a necessary result, if that life 
 has been loyal, and an impossible one, if it has been base. 
 Let a nation be healthful, happy, pure in its enjoyments, 
 brave in its acts, and broad in its affections, and its art will 
 spring round and within it as freely as the foam from a foun- 
 tain ; but let the springs of its life be impure, and its course 
 polluted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises 
 on the mathematical structure of bubbles. 
 
 And I am to-night the more restrained in addressing you, 
 because, gentlemen — ^I tell you honestly — I am weary of all 
 writing and speaking about art, and most of my own. No 
 good is to be reached that way. The last fifty years have, in 
 every civilized country of Europe, produced more brilliant 
 thought, and more subtle reasoning about art, than the five 
 thousand before them ; and what has it all come to ? Do not 
 let it be thought that I am Insensible to the high merits of 
 much of our modern work. It cannot be for a moment sup- 
 posed that in speaking of the inefficient expression of the 
 doctrines which writers on art have tried to enforce, I was 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 9 
 
 thinking of such Gothic as has been designed and built by 
 Mr. Scott, Mr. Butterfield, Mr. Street, Mr. Waterhouse, Mr. 
 Godwin, or my dead friend, Mr. Woodward. Their work 
 has been original and independent. So far as it is good, it 
 has been founded on principles learned not from books, but 
 by study of the monuments of the great schools, developed 
 by national grandeur, not by philosophical speculation. But 
 I am entirely assured that those who have done best among 
 us are the least satisfied with what they have done, and will 
 admit a sorrowful concurrence in my belief that the spirit, or 
 rather, I should say, the dispirit, of the age, is heavily 
 against them; that all the ingenious writing or thinking 
 which is so rife amongst us has failed to educate a public 
 capable of taking true pleasure in any kind of art, and that 
 the best designers never satisfy their own requirements of 
 themselves, unless by vainly addressing another temper of 
 mind, and providing for another manner of life, than ours. 
 All lovely architecture was designed for cities in cloudless 
 air ; for cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright 
 populousness and peace; cities built that men might live 
 happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's pre- 
 sence and powers. But our cities, built in black air, which, 
 by its accumulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisi- 
 ble in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot ; 
 
 cities which are mere crowded masses of store, and ware- 
 
 l* 
 
10 THE STUDr OF AECHITECTUKE. 
 
 house, and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the 
 world what the larder and cellar are to a private house ; 
 cities in which the object of men is not life, but labour; and 
 in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose machi- 
 nery ; cities in which the streets are not the avenues for the 
 passing and procession of a happy people, but the drains for 
 the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the only object 
 In reaching any spot is to be transferred to another ; in which 
 existence becomes mere transition, and every creature is only 
 one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of inter- 
 changing particles, circulating here by tunnels under ground, 
 and there by tubes in the air; for a city, or cities, such as 
 this, no architecture is possible — nay, no desire of it is possi- 
 ble to their inhabitants. 
 
 One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope 
 that conditions of art may be combined w^ith the occupations 
 of such a city, has been given lately in the design of the new 
 iron bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars. Distinct 
 attempt has been there made to obtain architectural efiect on 
 a grand scale. Nor was there anything in the nature of the 
 work to prevent such an effort being successful. It is not an 
 edifice's being of iron, or of glass, or thrown into new forms, 
 demanded by new purposes, which need hinder its being 
 beautiful. But it is the absence of all desire of beauty, of 
 all joy in fancy, and of all freedom in thought. If a Greek, 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUKE. 11 
 
 or Egyptian, or Gothic architect had been required to design 
 such a bridge, he would have looked instantly at the main 
 conditions of its structure, and dwelt on them with the 
 delight of imagination. He would have seen that the main 
 thing to be done was to hold a horizontal group of iron rods 
 steadily and straight over stone piers. Then he would have 
 said to himself (or felt without saying), " It is this holding, 
 — ^this grasp, — this securing tenor of a thing which might be 
 shaken, so that it cannot be shaken, on which I have to 
 insist." And he would have put some life into those iron 
 tenons. As a Greek put human life into his pillars and pro- 
 duced the caryatid ; and an Egyptian lotus life into his 
 pillars, and produced the lUy capital : so here, either of them 
 would have put some gigantic or some angelic life into those 
 colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged 
 statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron 
 rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents 
 holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals 
 couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding 
 with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts 
 would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or 
 human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, 
 whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes of 
 the work and the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, 
 now, the entire invention of the designer seems to have 
 
12 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 exhausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a weak 
 form of iron nut, and in conveying the information upon it, 
 in large letters, that it belongs to the London, Chatham, and 
 Dover Railway Company. I believe then, gentlemen, that if 
 there were any life in the national mind in such respects, it 
 would be shown in these its most energetic and costly works. 
 But that there is no such life, nothing but a galvanic restless- 
 ness and covetousness, with which it is for the present vain 
 to strive ; and in the midst of which, tormented at once by 
 its activities and its apathies, having their work continually 
 thrust aside and dishonoured, always seen to disadvantage, 
 and overtopped by huge masses, discordant and destructive, 
 even the best architects must be unable to do justice to their 
 own powers. 
 
 But, gentlemen, while thus the mechanisms of the age pre- 
 vent even the wisest and best of its artists from producing 
 entirely good work, may we not reflect with consternation 
 what a marvellous ability the luxury of the age, and the very 
 advantages of education, confer on the unwise and ignoble 
 for the production of attractively and infectiously had work. 
 I do not think that this adverse influence, necessarily afiect- 
 ing all conditions of so-called civilization, has been ever 
 enough considered. It is impossible to calculate the power 
 of the false workman in an advanced period of national life, 
 nor the temptation to all workmen to become false. 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 13 
 
 Ffrst, there is the irresistible appeal to vanity. There is 
 hardly any temptation of the kind (there cannot be) while 
 the arts are in progress. The best men must then always be 
 ashamed of themselves ; they never can be satisfied with 
 their work absolutely, but only as it is progressive. Take, 
 for instance, any archaic head intended to be beautiful ; say, 
 the Attic Athena, on the early Arethusa of Syracuse. In 
 that, and in all archaic work of promise, there is much that 
 is inefficient, much that to us appears ridiculous — but nothing 
 sensual, nothing vain, nothing spurious or imitative. It is a 
 child's work, a childish nation's work, but not a fool's work. 
 You find in children the same tolerance of ugliness, the same 
 eager and innocent delight in their own work for the 
 moment, however feeble ; but next day it is thrown aside, 
 and something better is done. Now, in this careless play, a 
 child or a childish nation differs inherently from a foolish 
 educated person, or a nation advanced in pseudo-civilization. 
 The educated person has seen all kinds of beautiful things, 
 of which he would fain do the like — not to add to their num- 
 ber — ^but for his own vanity, that he also may be called an 
 artist. Here is at once a singular and fatal difference. The 
 childish nation sees nothing in its own past work to satisfy 
 itself. It is pleased at havmg done this, but wants something 
 better ; it is struggling forward always to reach this better, 
 this ideal conception. It wants more beauty to look at, it 
 
14 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 wants more subject to feel. It calls out to all its artists- 
 stretching its hands to them as a little child does — " Oh, if 
 you would but tell me another story," — " Oh, if I might but 
 have a doll with bluer eyes." That's the right temper to 
 work in, and to get work done for you in. But the vain, 
 aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things 
 — it has myriads more than it can look at ; it has fallen into 
 a habit of inattention ; it passes weary and jaded through 
 galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of 
 human travail ; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its 
 way past them to the door. But there is one feeling that is 
 always distinct ; however jaded and languid we may be in all 
 other pleasures, we are never languid in vanity, and we would 
 still paint and carve for fame. "What other motive have the 
 nations of Europe to-day ? If they wanted art for art's sake, 
 they would take care of what they have already got. But at 
 this instant the two noblest pictures in Venice are lying 
 rolled up in out-houses, and the noblest portrait of Titian in 
 existence is hung forty feet from the ground. We have 
 absolutely no motive but vanity and the love of money — no 
 others, as nations, than these, whatever we may have as indi- 
 viduals. And as the thirst of vanity thus increases, so the 
 temptation to it. There was no fame of artists in these 
 archaic days. Every year, every hour, saw some one rise to 
 surpass what had been done before. And there was always 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 15 
 
 better work to be done, but never any credit to be got by it. 
 The artist lived in an atmosphere of pei-petual, wholesome, 
 inevitable eclipse. Do as well as you choose to-day, — make 
 the whole Borgo dance with delight, they would dance to a 
 better man's pipe to-morrow. Credette Cimahue nella pit- 
 tura^ tener lo campo, et or a ha Giotto il grido. This was the 
 fate, the necessary fate, even of the strongest. They could 
 only hope to be remembered as links in an endless chain. 
 For the weaker men it was no use even to put their name on 
 their works. They did not. If they could not work for joy 
 and for love, and take their part simply in the choir of human 
 toil, they might throw up their tools. But now it is far 
 otherwise— now, the best having been done — and for a couple 
 of hundred years, the best of us being confessed to have 
 come short of it, everybody thinks that he may be the great 
 man once again; and this is certain, that whatever in art is 
 done for display, is invariably wrong. 
 
 But, secondly, consider the attractive power of false art, 
 completed, as compared with imperfect art advancing to 
 completion. Archaic work, so far as faultful, is repulsive ; 
 but advanced work is, in all its faults, attractive. The 
 moment that art has reached the point at which it becomes 
 sensitively and delicately imitative, it appeals to a new 
 audience. From that instant it addresses the sensualist and 
 the idler. Its deceptions, its successes, its subtleties, become 
 
16 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 interesting to every condition of folly, of frivolity, and of 
 vice. And this new audience brings to bear upon the art in 
 wbich its foolish and wicked interest has been unhappily 
 awakened, the full power of its riches : the largest bribes of 
 gold as well as of praise are offered to the artist who will 
 betray his art, until at last, from the sculpture of Phidias and 
 fresco of Luini, it sinks into the cabinet ivory and the picture 
 kept under lock and key. Between these highest and lowest 
 types, there is a vast mass of merely imitative and delicately 
 sensual sculpture ; veiled nymphs — chained slaves — soft god- 
 desses seen by rose-light through suspended curtains — draw- 
 ing-room portraits and domesticities, and such like, in which 
 the interest is either merely personal and selfish, or dramatic 
 and sen-sational ; in either case, destructive of the power of 
 the public to sympathize with the aims of great architects. 
 
 Gentlemen, I am no Puritan, and have never praised or 
 advocated Puritanical art. The two pictures which I would 
 last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were 
 question of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and 
 Correggio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of these was 
 the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and reli- 
 gion — it was the fulness of passion in the life of a Britomart. 
 But the mid age and old age of nations is not like the mid age 
 or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be 
 criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it 
 
THE STUDY ©F ARCHITECTURE. 17 
 
 is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations, 
 to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any 
 demonstrable manner. The history of Italian art is that of a 
 struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side, 
 between continence and sensuality on another. So far as 
 naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is always pro- 
 gress; so far as sensuality over chastity, death. And the 
 two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible to distin- 
 guish one victory from the other. Observe, however, I say 
 victory over superstition, not over religion. Let me carefully 
 define the difference. Superstition, in all times and among 
 all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of 
 a man, whose acts are the acts of a man ; who is present in 
 some places, not in others; who makes some places holy, and 
 not others ; who is kind to one person, unkind to another ; 
 who is pleased or angry accordmg to the degree of attention 
 you pay to him, or praise you refuse to him ; who is hostile 
 generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice 
 of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, 
 whatever form of faith it colours, is the essence of superstition. 
 And religion is the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over 
 all His works — who is kind even to the unthankful and the 
 evil ; who is everywhere present, and therefore is in no place 
 to be sought, and in no place to be evaded ; to whom all 
 creatures, times, and things are everlastingly holy, and whc 
 
18 THE STUDY OF AflCHITECTURE. 
 
 claims — ^not tithes of wealth, nor sevenths of days — ^but all 
 the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and 
 all the beings that we are, but who claims that totality 
 because He delights only in the delight of His creatures ; and 
 because, therefore, the one duty that they owe to Him, and 
 the only service they can render Him, is to be happy. A 
 Spirit, therefore, Avhose eternal benevolence cannot be 
 angered, cannot be appeased; whose laws are everlasting 
 and inexorable,, so that heaven and earth must indeed pass 
 away if one jot of them failed : laws which attach to every 
 wrong and error a measured, inevitable penalty; to every 
 rightness and prudence, an assured reward ; penalty, of which 
 the remittance cannot be purchased ; and reward, of which 
 the promise cannot be broken. 
 
 And thus, in the history of art, we ought continually to 
 endeavour to distinguish (while, except in broadest lights, it 
 is impossible to distinguish) the work of religion from that of 
 superstition, and the work of reason from that of infidelity. 
 Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of 
 the gods ; superstition makes him the slave of ecclesiastical 
 pride, or forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain, 
 lieligion perfects the form of the divine statue ; superstition 
 distorts it into ghastly grotesque. Religion contemplates the 
 gods as the lords of healing and life, surrounds them with 
 glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUKE. 19 
 
 beauty. Superstition contemplates its idols as lords of death, 
 appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture 
 and solitude. Religion proselytizes by love, superstition by 
 war; religion teaches by example, superstition by persecu- 
 tion. Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden 
 temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared 
 aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian. Superstition made 
 idols of the splendours by which religion had spoken : reve- 
 renced pictures and stones, instead of truths ; letters and laws 
 instead of acts ; and for ever, in various madness of fantastic 
 desolation, kneels in the temple whUe it crucifies the Christ. 
 
 On the other hand, to reason resisting superstition, we owe 
 the entire compass of modern energies and sciences : the 
 healthy laws of life, and the possibilities of future progress. 
 But to infidelity resisting religion (or which is often enough 
 the case, taking the mask of it), we owe sensuality, cruelty 
 and war, insolence and avarice, modern political economy, 
 life by conservation of forces, and salvation by every man's 
 looking after his own interests ; and generally, whatsoever 
 of guilt, and folly, and death, there is abroad among us. 
 And of the two, a thousand-fold rather let us retain some 
 colour of superstition, so that we may keep also some 
 strength of religion, than comfort ourselves with colour jf 
 reason for the desolation of godlessness. I would say to 
 every youth who entered our schools — be a Mahometan, a 
 
20 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Diana-worshipper, a Fire-worshipper, Root-worshipper, if 
 you will ; but at least be so much a man as to know what 
 worship means. I had rather, a million-fold rather, see you 
 one of those " quibus hseo nascuntur in hortis numina," than 
 one of those quibus haec non nascuntur in cordibus lumina ; 
 and who are, by everlasting orphanage, divided from the 
 Father of Spirits, who is also the Father of lights, from 
 whom Cometh every good and perfect gift. 
 
 " So much of man," I say, feeling profoundly that all right 
 exercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of 
 good, depends on the primary formation of the character of 
 true manliness in the youth, — that is to say, of a majestic, 
 grave, and deliberate strength. How strange the words 
 sound; how little does it seem possible to conceive of 
 majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of 
 modern life. Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope that our 
 work will be majestic if there is no majesty in ourselves. 
 The word " manly" has come to mean practically, among us, 
 a schoolboy's character, not a man's. "We are, at our best, 
 thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement ; 
 curious in knowledge ibr its novelty, not for its system and 
 results ; faithful and aiFectionate to those among whom we 
 are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to stran- 
 gers ; we are stupidly conscientious, and instinctively brave, 
 and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 21 
 
 make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained 
 the justice. This is our highest type — notable peculiarly 
 among nations for its gentleness, together with its courage ; 
 but in lower conditions it is especially liable to degradation 
 by its love of jest and of vulgar sensation. It is against this 
 fatal tendency to vile play that we have chiefly to contend. 
 It is the spirit of Milton's Comus ; bestial itself, but having 
 power to arrest and paralyze all who come within its 
 influence, even pure creatures sitting helpless, mocked by it 
 on their marble thrones. It is incompatible, not only with all 
 greatness of character, but with all true gladness of heart, 
 and it develops itself in nations in proportion to their degra- 
 dation, connected with a peculiar gloom and a singular ten- 
 dency to play with death, which is a morbid reaction from 
 the morbid excess. 
 
 A book has lately been published on the Mythology of the 
 Rhine, with illustrations by Gustavo Dor6. The Rhine god 
 is represented in the vignette title-page with a pipe in one 
 hand and a pot of beer in the other. You cannot have a 
 more complete type of the tendency which is chiefly to be 
 dreaded in this age than in this conception, as opposed to 
 any possibility of representation of a river-god, however 
 playful, in the mind of a Greek painter. The example is the 
 more notable because Gustavo Dore's is not a common mind, 
 and, if born in any other epoch, he would probably have 
 
22 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 done valuable (though never first-rate) work ; but by glanc- 
 ing (it will be impossible for you to do more than glance) at 
 his illustrations of Balzac's " Contes Drolatiques," you will 
 see further how this " drolatique," or semi-comic mask, is, in 
 the truth of it, the mask of a skull, and how the tendency to 
 burlesque jest is both in France and England only an efferves- 
 cence from the cloaca maxima of the putrid instincts which 
 fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the 
 luxury of European capitals, what Dante meant when he 
 wrote, quel mi sveglio col puzzo^ of the body of the "Wealth- 
 Siren ; the mocking levity and mocking gloom being equally 
 signs of the death of the soul ; just as, contrariwise, 
 a passionate seriousness and passionate joyfulness are signs 
 of its full life in works such as those of Angelico, Luini, 
 Ghiberti, or La Robbia. 
 
 It is to recover this stern seriousness, this pure and thrill- 
 ing joy, together with perpetual sense and spiritual presence, 
 that all true education of youth must now be directed. This 
 seriousness, this passion, this universal human religion, are 
 the first principles, the true roots of all art, as they are of all 
 doing, of all being. Get this vis viva first and all great 
 work will follow. Lose it, and your schools of art will stand 
 among other living schools as the frozen corpses stand by the 
 winding stair of the St. Michael's Convent of Mont Cenis, 
 holding their hands stretched out under their shrouds, as if 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 23 
 
 beseeching the passer-by to look upon the wasting of their 
 death. 
 
 And all the higher branches of technical teaching are vain 
 without this ; nay, are in some sort vain altogether, for they 
 are superseded by this. You may teach imitation, because 
 the meanest man can imitate ; but you can neither teach ideal- 
 ism nor composition, because only a great man can choose, 
 conceive, or compose ; and he does all these necessarily, and 
 because of his nature. His greatness is in his choice of things, 
 in his analysis of them ; and his combining powers involve 
 the totality of his knowledge in life. His methods of obser- 
 vation and abstraction are essential habits of his thought, con- 
 ditions of his being. If he looks at a human form he recog- 
 nises the signs of nobility in it, and loves them — hates what- 
 ever is diseased, frightful, sinful, or designant of decay. All 
 ugliness, and abortion, and fading away ; all signs of vice 
 and foulness, he turns away from, as inherently diabolic and 
 horrible ; all signs of unconquered emotion he regrets, as 
 weaknesses. He looks only for the calm purity of the 
 human creature, in living conquest of its passions and of 
 fate. 
 
 That is idealism ; but you cannot teach any one else tha 
 preference. Take a man who likes to see and paint the gam 
 bier's rage ; the hedge-ruffian's enjoyment ; the debauched 
 soldier's stiife ; the vicious woman's degradation ; — take a 
 
24 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 man fed ou the dusky picturesque of rags and guilt ; talk to 
 him of principles of beauty ! make him draw what you will, 
 how you will, he will leave the- stain of himself on whatever 
 he touches. You had better go lecture to a snail, and tell it 
 to leave no slime behind it. Try to make a mean man com- 
 pose; you will find nothing in his thoughts consecutive or 
 proportioned — nothing consistent in his sight — nothing in his 
 fancy. He cannot comprehend two things in relation at once 
 — how much less twenty ! How much less all ! Everything 
 is uppermost with him in its turn, and each as large as the 
 rest; but Titian or Veronese compose as tranquilly as they 
 would speak — inevitably. The thing comes to them so — 
 they see it so — rightly, and in harmony : they will not talk 
 to you of composition, hardly even understanding how lower 
 people see things otherwise, but knowing that if they do see 
 otherwise, there is for them the end there, talk as you will. 
 
 I had intended, in conclusion, gentlemen, to incur such 
 blame of presumption as might be involved in offering some 
 hints for present practical methods in architectural schools, 
 but here again I am checked, as I have been throughout, by 
 a sense of the uselessness of all minor means and helps, with- 
 out the establishment of a true and broad educational sys- 
 tem. My wish would be to see the profession of the archi- 
 tect united, not with that of the engineer, but of the sculp- 
 tor. I think there should be a separate school and university 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 25 
 
 course for engineers, in which the principal branches of study- 
 connected with that of practical buil'ding should be the phy- 
 sical and exact sciences, and honours should be taken i 
 mathematics ; but I think there should be another school and 
 university course for the sculptor and architect in which lite- 
 rature and philosophy should be the associated branches of 
 study, and honours should be taken in Uteris tiumaniorihus , 
 and I think a young architect's examination for his degree 
 (for mere pass), should be much stricter than that of youths 
 intending to enter other professions. The quantity of 
 scholarship necessary for the efficiency of a country clergy- 
 man is not great. So that he be modest and kindly, the 
 main truths he has to teach may be learned better in his 
 heart than in books, and taught in very simple English. The 
 best physicians I have known spent very little time in their 
 libraries; and though my lawyer sometimes chats with me 
 over a Greek coin, I think he regards the time so spent in 
 the light rather of concession to my idleness than as helpful 
 to his professional labours. 
 
 But there is no task undertaken by a true architect of 
 Vhich the honourable fulfilment will not require a range of 
 knowledge and habitual feeling only attainable by advanced 
 scholarship. 
 
 Since, however, such expansion of system is, at present,. 
 
 beyond hope, the best we can do is to render the studies 
 
 2 
 
26 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 undertaken in our schools thoughtful, reverent, and refined, 
 according to our power. Especially it should be our aim to 
 prevent the minds of the students from being distracted by 
 models of an unworthy or mixed character. A museum is 
 one thing — a school another ; and I am persuaded that as the 
 efiiciency of a school of literature depends on the mastering 
 a few good books, so the efiiciency of a school of art will 
 depend on the understanding a few good models. And so 
 strongly do I feel this that I would, for my own part, at once 
 consent to sacrifice my personal predilections in art, and to 
 vote for the exclusion of all Gothic or Mediaeval models what- 
 soever, if by this sacrifice I could obtain also the exclusion of 
 Byzantine, Indian, Renaissance-French, and other more or 
 less attractive but barbarous work ; and thus concentrate the 
 mind of the student wholly upon the study of natural form, 
 and upon its treatment by the sculptors and metal workers 
 of Greece, Ionia, Sicily, and Magna GrsBcia, between 500 and 
 350 B.C., but I should hope that exclusiveness need not be 
 carried quite so far. 
 
 I think Donatello, Mino of Fiesole, the Robbias, Ghiberti, 
 Verrocchio, and Michael Angel o, should be adequately repre- 
 sented in our schools — together with the Greeks — and that a 
 few carefully chosen examples of the floral sculpture of the 
 iN'orth in the thirteenth century should be added, with espe- 
 cial view to display the treatment of naturalistic ornament in 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 27 
 
 subtle connexion with constructive requirements ; and in the 
 course of study pursued with reference to these models, as 
 of admitted perfection, I should endeavour first to make the 
 student thoroughly acquainted with the natural forms and 
 characters of the objects he had to treat, and then to exercise 
 him in the abstraction of these forms, and the suggestion of 
 these characters, under due sculptural limitation. He should 
 first be taught to draw largely and simply ; then he should 
 make quick and firm sketches of flowers, animals, drapery, 
 and figures, from nature, in the simplest terms of line, and 
 light, and shade ; always being taught to look at the organic 
 actions and masses, not at the textures or accidental eJOfects 
 of shade ; meantime his sentiment respecting all these things 
 should be cultivated by close and constant inquiry into their 
 mythological significance and associated traditions; then, 
 knowing the things and creatures thoroughly, and regarding 
 them through an atmosphere of enchanted memory, he 
 should be shown how the facts he has taken so long to learn 
 are summed up by a great sculptor in a few touches : how 
 those touches are invariably arranged in musical and decora- 
 tive relations ; how every detail unnecessary for his purpose 
 IS refused ; how those necessary for his purpose are insisted 
 upon, or even exaggerated, or represented by singular arti- 
 fice, when literal representation is impossible ; and how all 
 this is done under the instinct and passion of an inner com- 
 
28 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 manding spirit which it is indeed impossible to imitate, but 
 possible, perhaps, to share. 
 
 Perhaps! Pardon me that I speak despondingly. For 
 my own part, I feel the force of mechanism and the fury of 
 avaricious commerce to be at present so irresistible, that I 
 have seceded from the study not only of architecture, but 
 nearly of all art ; and have given myself, as I would in a 
 besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and 
 water for its multitudes, there remaining no question, it 
 seems to me, of other than such grave business for the time. 
 But there is, at least, this ground for courage, if not for 
 hope : As the evil spirits of avarice and luxury are directly 
 contrary to art, so, also, art is directly contrary to them ; 
 and according to its force expulsive of them and medicinal 
 against them ; so that the establishment of such schools as I 
 have ventured to describe — whatever their immediate suc- 
 cess or ill-success in the teaching of art — would yet be the 
 directest method of resistance to those conditions of evil 
 among which our youth are cast at the most critical period 
 of their lives. We may not be able to produce architecture, 
 but, at the least, we shall resist vice. I do not know if it 
 has been observed that while Dante rightly connects archi- 
 tecture, as the most permanent expression of the pride of 
 humanity, whether just or unjust, with the first cornice of 
 Purgatory, he indicates its noble function by engraving upon 
 
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 29 
 
 it, in perfect sculpture, the stories which rebuke the errors 
 and purify the purposes of noblest souls. In the fulfilment 
 of such function, literally and practically, here among men, 
 is the only real use or piide of noble architecture, and on its 
 acceptance or surrender of that function it depends whether, 
 in future, the cities of England melt into a ruin more con- 
 fused and ghastly than ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited, 
 or purge and exalt themselves into true habitations of 
 men, whose walls shall be Safety, and whose gates shall be 
 Praise, 
 
RUSKIN'S WORKS 
 
 UNIFORM IN SIZE AND STYIiE. 
 
 MODERN PAINTERS.— 5 vols., tinted paper, beveUed 
 
 boards. Plates. Inbox $14 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. half calf . . , . . 21 00 
 
 Ditto. white paper, without plates ... 9 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. ditto. half calf . . . 17 50 
 
 STONES OF VENICE.— 3 vols, on tinted paper, bevelled 
 
 boards. In box 7 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. half calf 12 00 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WORKS— (including aU the Volumes 
 named below). 4 vols, on tinted paper, bevelled boards, 
 
 in box 10 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. half calf . , . 16 00 
 
 SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE— 1 vol. 12mo., cloth 1 25 
 Ditto. ditto. 1 vol. 12mo., plates, cloth . . 1 75 
 
 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING— 
 
 1 vol. 12ino., cloih 1 50 
 
 TWO PATHS— Being Lectures on Art. 1 vol. 12mo., cloth, 
 
 plaies 1 25 
 
 ELEMENTS OF DRAWING-1 vol. 12mo., cloth . . 1 00 
 ELEMENTS OF PERSPECTIVE— 1 vol. 12mo., cloth . 1 00 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART— 1 vol. 12mo. . . 1 00 
 PRE-RAPHAELITISM— Construction of Sheepfolds— King 
 
 of the Golden River. 1 vol. 12mo., cloth . . . 1 00 
 SESAME AND LILIES— Two Lectures on Books and 
 
 Women. 1 vol. 12mo., cloth 1 00 
 
 LECTURE BEFORE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTS . 
 RUSKIN'S COMPLETE WORKS— 12 vols., tinted paper, 
 
 bevelled boards 31 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. 12 vols, half calf . . . .49 00 
 
 BEAUTIES OF RUSKIN; OR, THE TRUE AND BEAU- 
 TIFUL — Selected from the Works of John Ruskin, by 
 Mrs. L. C. Tuthill. 1 vol. 12mo., tinted paper, bevelled 
 
 boards, gilt top 2 50 
 
 Ditto. ditto white paper, cloth . . . 2 00 
 
 Ditto. ditto. half calf . . . . .4 00 
 
 PRECIOUS THOUGHTS, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS— 
 Selected from the Works of John Raskin, by Mrs. L. C. 
 TuthilL 1 vol. 12mo., tinted paper, bevelled boards, gilt 
 
 top 2 50 
 
 Ditto. ditto. half cM ... . 4 00 
 
 Puhlislied and for Sale hy 
 
 JOHN WILEY & SON, 535 Broadway, H. Y. 
 
 *j^* Any of the above works will be prepaid by mail on receipt 
 of the price. 
 
M